Province wants to double tourism revenue by 2035; visiting officials recognize tourism-community challenges

Premier Danielle Smith was in Jasper this week to announce a new provincial tourism strategy and on St. Valentine’s Day had adoring words for Jasper’s welcoming nature.

“Jasper and Banff are the most visited national parks in Canada, and the face of the tourism industry that has helped diversify Alberta’s tourism economy for decades,” she gushed.

In between dining at Evil Dave’s Grill and Pyramid Lake Lodge’s Aalto Restaurant, skiing at Marmot Basin, ice skating and hot-tubbing, caucus members with the UCP government were meeting in Jasper in advance of the upcoming legislative sessions.

“We always meet before we go back into session so we can go into what the legislative agenda is going to be,” Smith told The Jasper Local before being ushered into her security vehicle, en route back to Edmonton. 

An hour earlier, on Wednesday, February 14, Smith took to a podium—set up in a ballroom at a local hotel—to announce the province’s new long-term tourism strategy. The plan includes underwriting Travel Alberta’s ability to develop unique tourism experiences; the creation of a new, tourism-specific immigration stream; expanding Indigenous tourism; and facilitating increased air-access for visitors.

“This strategy takes a whole-of-government approach,” Smith said. 

House-keeping 

The province wants to double Alberta’s visitor economy, to $25 billion, by 2035. To help get there, the UCP—in coordination with the federal government—is launching a new immigration stream to help the tourism industry address labour gaps. The announcement came on Tuesday, February 13, at another Jasper-based presser.

“Hospitality and tourism was one of the industries hardest hit by the pandemic and continues to face challenges today, especially attracting labour,” said Muhammad Yaseen, Alberta’s Minister of Immigration and Multiculturalism. 

The new tourism-specific immigration stream will help attract a skilled workforce by offering permanent residency to qualifying individuals after only six months of work experience, he said.

“They can be nominated quicker,” Yaseen said. 

But just where they will be housed is a different question. Asked how the government will ensure not just the hotels and captains of industry will prosper, but what new housing and other supports front line workers of the tourism sector might benefit from, Minister of Tourism and Sport Joseph Schow said the government is “working toward a solution.”

“We need to have a place where [workers] can actually rest their head at night,” he said. 

Sweet nothings

In her Valentine’s Day press conference, Smith spread the love for Jasper’s hospitality and mountain views.

“This has just been glorious to be up here,” she said. “Jasper and Banff are two of the world’s most celebrated wilderness destinations.”

Smith deftly stick-handled a question about payments on provincially-owned properties owed to Alberta municipalities. In 2019, the United Conservative Party-led government indicated to Alberta municipalities that going forward, the province would only be paying 75 percent of its payments in lieu of taxes (PILT) on provincially-owned properties. More recently, they changed that payment to just 50 percent—and essentially told municipal officials who had a problem with the decision to go pound sand. Many municipalities, including Jasper, were forced to write off the receivables as bad debt.  

“It’s not so much the dollar amount, which isn’t much,” Jasper Mayor Richard Ireland has said [in Jasper it was approximately $30,000 in 2022). “This is a government that purported to act on a fair deal for Alberta, and refuses to give a fair deal to Alberta municipalities.” 

Faced with that suggestion, Smith insisted the government’s new fiscal framework will ensure municipalities’ funding grows alongside provincial revenues. 

She then acknowledged that tourism-based communities such as Jasper, Banff and Canmore shoulder a heavy burden when it comes to visitor impact on local infrastructure.

“If we’re going to support more traffic coming to these communities they’re going to need the dollars to be able to support that extra traffic,” she said.

After the presser, during a brief chat, Premier Smith repeated that sentiment to Mayor Ireland. 

“If we need to develop some new funding framework to be able to support our resort communities I’d be very interested in asking our tourism and sport minister to look into that,” she said.

Bob Covey // bob@thejasperlocal.com